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Jumping Spider: image courtesy of Science/AAAS To figure out how far away our dinner plate is our brain melds the slightly different images coming from our two eyes.

A recently described swarm of fossil insects unearthed from a 100 million-year-old South American formation are a Frankensteinian riot of mismatched parts: lengthy praying mantis-like front legs; long, slim wings like a dragonfly; and wing-vein patterns to match those of modern-day mayflies. So unusual is their form that scientists are cataloguing the creatures into a completely new taxonomic order.